DEALS

Tom Jackson's baseball card - if he had one - would report he throws left, writes right. In his columns and blog, "The Right Stuff," southpaw Jackson provides insight into the evolving human condition from a distinctly conservative point of view.

Lois Lerner: Relentlessly up to no good

It grows increasingly apparent — almost by the day — why Lois Lerner hid behind the Fifth Amendment rather than answer questions from the House Oversight Committee. The woman seems to have been, ceaselessly, up to no good.

It seems Chuck Grassley, the longtime Iowa senator, was invited in December 2012 to speak before some unnamed group; the invitation also included an offer to pay for Grassley’s wife to attend. Lerner, also invited to the event, got wind of the arrangement through an envelope-stuffing mix-up. She got Grassley’s and Grassley got hers.

A short email chain ensued, beginning with Lerner’s recommendation to tax law specialist Matthew Giuliano that Grassley (or the group; the messages are unclear) “should [be referred] to Exam” — that is, submitted for an audit — because “they were inappropriately offering to pay for his wife.”

In the face of a flailing ignorance of the tax code Lerner helped oversee, Giuliano patiently replied her suggestion wouldn’t ripen until the Grassleys filed their taxes. Lerner appears to have accepted that explanation, and the episode was not heard about again until it was revealed Wednesday by House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp, a Michigan Republican.

Democrats and lefty pundits want us to believe this was no more than a bump in the lane in the NBA Finals. No harm, no foul. Even to point it out is ticky-tacky. They claim the real story is that Lerner made an honest mistake — the tax code is hard, you know? — and quickly reversed herself when the problems were explained.

Let me be clear: I am as much against Lerner’s “audit of Chuck Grassley” as I am Lerner’s decision to set a school bus on fire and cut the brakes, watching it careen off a bridge and into a canyon. As she appears to have done neither of these horrible things, I’d argue that the vanishing of the IRS’s and EPA’s tranches of emails, for reasons that confound techies, are much more scandalous than the hour Lerner apparently spent wondering if she had to refer a senatorial speaking invitation to the exam department.

I’d agree that Weigel is half-right, anyway. The creepily convenient deep-sixed emails represent far larger scandals, implying cover-ups of everything from garden-variety abuse to criminal activity. But his analogy works only if it is also Lerner’s instinct to sabotage Blue Birds.

Clearly, Lerner’s default setting was to move aggressively whenever and wherever possible against rivals of and obstacles to elected Democrats, to whom she was a faithful contributor, and from whom she earned her livelihood.

Lerner’s spiteful predisposition, plainly exposed — again — by this episode, is the story here. Unequivocally. Her reflex to unleash the scary powers of the IRS on a political rival is part of the larger quilt of recklessness that stymied tea party and 9/12 groups across the country in the run-up to the 2012 election, the outcome of which always will bear an asterisk that looks for all the world like Lois Lerner peering down her nose at us unworthy, power-challenged rubes.